PRIMARY SOURCE

Modulation Error Ratio

By Ron Hranac – One of the most widely used metrics for characterizing the health of digital signals carried in cable networks is modulation error ratio (MER), or more specifically, receive modulation error ratio (RxMER).

Read More

Signal Leakage

By Ron Hranac – The metric of interest for leakage is its field strength in microvolts per meter (not just microvolts), which is typically measured with a dedicated signal leakage detector. The value of keeping the plant tight helps to avoid harmful interference to over-the-air users. An effective leakage monitoring and repair program also helps to reduce ingress problems, and ensures better network performance.

Read More

The Untapped Capacity of Coaxial Cable

By Ron Hranac – At some point in the future FTTH will be ubiquitous. I’ll defer to the finance folks to sort out when it makes sense dollar-wise to jump to all-fiber operation. In the meantime, HFC networks will be here for the foreseeable future.

Read More

Hammin’ it Up!

By Ron Hranac – RF technology is, without a doubt, the foundation of our HFC networks. Many of us learned and continue to learn about RF on the job, from SCTE, publications such as Broadband Library, NCTI courses, vendor and in-house training, and community colleges and universities. I’ll add amateur (“ham”) radio to the list.

Read More

Signal Level: The Powers That Be

By Ron Hranac – When we measure the level of an analog TV signal’s visual carrier, we are measuring its peak envelope power. For a legacy SC-QAM signal, we measure the entire haystack’s average power. And for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals, we also measure average power.

Read More

A Word Paints a Thousand Pictures

By Ron Hranac – It’s been said that the only constant in the cable industry is change, and that’s certainly true when it comes to technology and the terminology associated with that technology. Hopefully this introduction helps to clarify some of the often confusing terminology used by the cable industry.

Read More

Frequency Response Testing

By Ron Hranac – Frequency response is one of several metrics that can be used to determine the performance of a component, device, system, or network. The term frequency response is more accurately called complex frequency response, the latter a measure of magnitude- and phase-versus-frequency.

Read More